


Rewrite the Stars

by ChronicallyOwlish



Category: Andromeda (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crew as Family, F/M, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Prompt Fill, Romance, Season 3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-19 13:36:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14238423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicallyOwlish/pseuds/ChronicallyOwlish
Summary: Set in season three. A single step down an unexpected path changes the Universe and the destinies of the Andromeda crew.





	1. Prologue: Ripple

**Author's Note:**

> So, this first chapter is a prompt fill for my daily prompts on the /r/fanfiction subreddit and Discord server. 
> 
> The prompt is: True Love’s First Kiss™ is not exactly what your characters thought it would be. 
> 
> This is going to be at least two chapters long with the first one being a ficlet, but I am almost certain it is going to eventually turn into a much longer canon-divergent fic where the Andromeda crew actually gets to have relationships.
> 
> Enjoy, and please let me know what you think!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a prologue to this story, though I am posting it after I posted the first chapter because I wrote it later. I am trying something fun and challenging with this story. I want to create a narrative through prompt fills, so each chapter is going to be based closely, or loosely, on a prompt from the /r/fanfiction subreddit or Discord server.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Set after the Season Three Premier.

“We’ve changed the future,” Dylan says and steps in beside her. She doesn’t respond but continues to stare at the pond before them, watching the salmon with their silvery scales swim near the bottom over colorful stones, their mouths opening and closing, unaware that they are on a starship light years away from their spawning grounds, never to return. She’d kept them to feed Rev Bem. He’s been gone for months to her friends and for her it’s been decades. Yet she tends to them still, unable to let the link to her old friend go. Or perhaps it’s because she understands their struggle. By coming back to this point in time to change the future, she’s severed her link to her people, leaving her alone and far from home.

For the first time since she was very young, her thoughts are hers alone. It’s terribly confusing. All she needs to do is reach out to them to restore the link and restore a sense of normalcy. Their goals are still the same, so far as she knows, yet she hesitates. Though it’s strange and sometimes frightening, it’s also nice to be the master of her own destiny and the keeper of her own thoughts.

“So we have,” she says finally, shifting her gaze so she can see Dylan. She loves him as a friend. As a mentor. Sometimes as an equal, and sometimes as a superior.

Her people wouldn’t understand her love. A star doesn’t love a man, even as a dear friend.

The celestial bodies of the Universe—suns and moons and planets—see sentient organics as pets. They are important tools. Pack-horses carrying their portion of the-fate-of-the-Universe on their backs, laboring through life at the subtle direction of their betters—their gods. Going where they are told to go. Doing what they need to do. Her people are spiders plucking at a vast universal web, luring the Abyss into their trap. Destroy the Abyss and they save the Universe. Don’t and they all perish. What do the lives of short-lived sentient organics matter when so much is at stake? 

But her people are wrong. They’ve never lived beside the aliens they use. Never experienced their passion, or seen the power of their intellects, so vast despite their incredibly short lives. They know these people are needed to defeat the enemy, yet they don’t believe them to be people. Just pawns on a game board to move around as they see fit.

She has changed the future, yet she has not changed any minds. It’s difficult to move a star.

The pathways of possible futures are all dark today, their secrets hidden in the shadows, but they will reveal themselves if she looks long enough and hard enough. And perhaps today is the day she will see the elusive perfect possible future. The one where the Universe survives and her friends all find happiness.

“Gilder for your thoughts?” Dylan asks, perceptive as always. “I thought you’d be happier. We’re all alive and well. Your horrible future didn’t come true.”

One of the salmon jumps, casting drops of water in the air where they sparkle in the lights. Ripples extend from the place where it lands and tiny waves lap at the side of the pond. She decides to let Dylan inside, just a little. Not a choice she makes lightly, because every bit of her true self she shows puts her plans at risk, and the one thing her people aren’t wrong about is the danger the Universe is in. But her organic heart squeezes in her chest, longing for comfort, and it speeds up when she searches those dark paths and imagines the faces of her friends and the myriads of ways harm can come to them. They are so fragile.

Her strength is flagging under the weight of the task she must carry out, her knees buckling, and if she won’t ask her people to share the burden with her, she must ask someone else.

She trusts Dylan.

“I am happy, but I am also concerned.” 

Plants grow all around, stretching out from their pots and reaching towards the artificial sunlight. They, too, are unaware of how far from home they are. One of the rose bushes is in full bloom, red-petaled blossoms spread out wide. Each one a perfect specimen. She reaches out and plucks one then holds it in her hands. 

Dylan is watching her now. His gaze heavy. It always is. She can feel him searching, trying to dig deeper, to learn what’s hidden beneath the surface. And she wishes she could tell him everything but even now, as daring as she feels, she won’t go that far. Not this time. Instead, she gives him a small amount. Just enough to bring herself relief.

“Our destinies are made up of choices. Choices we make. Choices that are made for us. They are infinite. Uncountable. The different pathways they create are sometimes too indistinguishable at first to know which will lead to the desired outcome—the perfect possible future.” She tosses the rose as far out into the pond as she can. It lands without a sound and without a splash. Concentric circles stretch out like a target with the perfect red rose in its center. “The rose’s weight is negligible, yet, even so, it ripples and that ripple touches everything in the pond before it diminishes. Changes everything just a little bit.”

“There’s a lot of power in a single choice,” Dylan says, catching on. She knew he would. There’s a timelessness to him she can’t understand. A wisdom beyond that of a typical human.

“A single choice can change everything, and the paths are always expanding, always shifting. We have changed one future, but I do not know yet if we are in a better or worse one.”

“It’s a lot of responsibility for one person to decide the fate of the Universe.”

“I was born for this. It is my weight to bear.” She shrugs because it is a foregone conclusion; she will save the Universe. It’s her duty. Duty is something Dylan understands as well. Though she tries to hide it, her words carry a note of sadness. A note of resignation.

His touch is gentle on her arm. Friendly. Loving. She looks away from the pond and into his eyes, reading an ocean’s worth of emotions within them.

“And where does happiness factor in if every choice you make is for the good of the Universe?”

A knot forms in her throat. Thickens it so that she can’t swallow and tears build up in the corner of her eyes. She smiles through her tears and refuses to let them fall. Her voice is strong and does not waver when she finally speaks, because she is strong too, and she will not cower in the face of her destiny. “My happiness is inconsequential where the fate of the Universe is concerned.” 

She sounds like she believes it.

Dylan shakes his head and raises a hand to touch her cheek. It’s a brief touch. Soft, though his hands are large and accustomed rougher things. Fatherly, almost.

“No one’s happiness is inconsequential, Trance. Especially not yours.” He turns to leave, takes a step, and then turns back around. “I refuse to believe there is only one perfect possible future. Only one where everything turns out right. We make our own futures.”

As his footsteps fade away she watches the rose sink to the bottom of the pond. The fish go on swimming, undisturbed, casting their shadows over the sunken flower and she ponders the future again, and what it might mean if she chooses to be selfish. To be happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt that inspired this chapter was: Character A explains an aspect of their worldview to Character B for the first time. Have fun exploring your characters and their motivations!
> 
> Thanks, and please let me know what you think!


	2. The Crazy Path

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set after 3x12 "The Dark Backward"

It’s late, so he is surprised to hear footsteps on the ladder. He doesn’t need to look up to know they belong to Trance. Over time, he’s learned to tell the differences in his crewmates gaits.

“Can’t sleep?” he asks. Dumb question, really. He isn’t sure how much she sleeps, but it’s a lot less than he does.

She reaches the deck and crowds into the conduit with him. Kneeling room only. They are less than a step apart. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

As if on cue, a yawn cracks his jaw. “Can’t knock out yet, a quarter of the systems are still offline and the rest are anywhere from slightly broken to ready to suffer catastrophic failure if anyone sneezes too close to them.” That’s half the truth. The other half is that he can’t shake the feeling that this latest battle could have gone a lot worse. Perhaps it’s the extent of the damage—the ease at which the enemy had invaded and laid waste to Andromeda's systems. Perhaps it’s the number of crewmembers killed. Perhaps it’s because, even with Andromeda’s vast processing systems, they still know nothing about who attacked them, or why. But he feels like death has touched him and he’s somehow lived to tell about it.

“Would you like some company?” She hands him his nano welder before he can ask for it and he turns to look at her. The polite brush off and _‘I’d really prefer to be alone right now’_ gets stuck in his throat, because her eyes are full of something he can’t read, but it’s clear she’s here because she wants to be near him, not because she thinks he needs companionship.

“Everything okay?” he asks, eyes narrowing.

She fidgets and shifts her gaze to the yellow glow of the open circuit boards, studying his work. He doesn’t stop watching her. Even in the dimness of the conduit, her skin sparkles and it’s almost hypnotizing with his eyes so heavy and falling out of focus if he forgets to blink. 

She ignores his staring. “How long before we get a new slipstream core?”

“Courier should reach Terazed tomorrow. We’ll keep limping at sublight speed to the nearest port of call, and maybe, just maybe, if we’re really lucky and the fate gods are feeling particularly benevolent, we’ll be back in action next week.”

Tentatively, he reaches out and grabs her upper arm to get her attention. She turns, a few dark-red dreadlocks falling over her shoulder, and he catches her gaze again, drawn in by the intensity of feelings in it; by the emotions she’s trying to hide from him. Wheels are turning just beneath the surface, trying figure a way out of the corner she’s backed herself into.

There are two paths before him. The smart path where he turns back to his work and lets it go. Keeps it professional. Follows expected social norms. That’s the path he should turn down. But then there’s the crazy path and it’s looking pretty attractive right about now.  
He isn’t sure why he does it—why he gives into instinct while the logical part of his brain is screaming in the background, or even why this is happening now. It’s been at least a year since he’s thought of Trance as anything more than a close friend. But, there’s something in her eyes and the part of his brain that regulates self-control checked out at least three hours and four Sparky Colas ago. Took a vacation somewhere far far away from where he can’t get to it. So he doesn’t just walk down the crazy path, he runs down it and kisses her right on her full red lips.

Whatever he’d expected in the two seconds he gave himself to ponder the consequences of his actions, it wasn’t this. He’d thought she would back away, push him off of her, or even smack him. He’d imagined her snapping, asking him what was wrong with him.

She does none of those things.

There is a brief moment of hesitation and then she’s kissing him back. Really kissing him, with a hand on his face and another running through his hair. The welder drops from his hand and clatters to the deck plates as his arms wrap around her slender frame, hands on the curve of her back, pulling her closer. There’s something sweet on her lips. She’s warm. Whatever it is she uses on her hair smells amazing. It’s hard to breathe, and his head is spinning, and his heart is suddenly beating so fast and is so full that it’s almost bursting.

There is only one thing on his mind when she pulls away: no one has ever kissed him like that before and no kiss has ever left him so breathless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The prompt that inspired this was "True love's first kiss is not what your characters expected it to be."


	3. Undeniably Alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted a prologue to this story a couple of days ago, but Ao3 didn't send the update e-mail, so if you haven't read that and you want to, it is the new chapter one. Enjoy!

Her organic body reacts to stimuli much the same as the human body does, though sometimes she wishes it wouldn’t. Like when in a moment of carelessness and distraction she cuts herself on a pair of gardening shears, or in the hours after consuming too much alcohol her stomach roils and her head pounds. 

Or now. 

As Harper’s face draws nearer, her heart speeds up and her lungs constrict despite the fact she needs neither blood nor air to survive. When his lips—softer than she expected—touch hers there is a moment of confusion before her body takes over and the part of herself that is prone to chaos, that lives for these glorious and spontaneous moments of pure living drinks it in. Relishes in the sensations it creates and how every system reacts from the way the hairs stand up on her arms, to the chill that runs down her back.

It is one of the reasons she was drawn to Harper when they first met and why they’d become close friends. He is like electricity. Like lightening. Always buzzing and striking out unpredictably and changing the world around him with his presence. It’s hard not to simply live when he’s around. But tonight, he’s hit her directly.

When she kisses him back, it’s all feeling, sudden and intense. Unstoppable. Because no one can escape lightening when it chooses to strike. She explores his lips, then his mouth. He smells of mechanical things, coffee, and sweat and tastes of Sparky Cola. His tongue runs along her lips, and he grunts as he pulls her closer, his fingers kneading the muscles of her back deeply. Her fingers find his face, rough with a five-o-clock shadow, then his hair, soft in places and stiff in others from the gel he spikes it with.

She’s lost in a dream. A possible future. She lets it play out, lets it take her where it will, though she’s never lingered on these possibilities before. Too much at stake. Today is different.

This afternoon, as their faceless enemy worked to destroy the Andromeda she’d traveled hundreds of possible futures searching for a way to save her friends, and in almost all of them, Harper died first. He died in front of her as she tried desperately to save him, exhausting all of her medical knowledge. He died suddenly without waking. Without a word. His heart stopped beating and there was nothing more she could do as a physician or a friend to start it again. She’d cradled his lifeless body, sobbing and telling deaf ears how sorry was. How she wished she could save him. It’d torn a hole in her heart, jagged and deep, and though she’d found a way in the end, the aching scar remained.

She’d come to see him tonight to reassure herself his heart was still beating. Now she can feel it beating against her hands as her palms brush his neck. A pulse strong and fast. Like hers. Their breath mingles between them. She’s pressed up against him, his chest rising and falling, and he is undeniably alive. Warmth spreads through her belly. There is fire in her cheeks. And she wants more. More of his lips. More of his hands. More of his body pressed up against hers.

The part of herself that is rational, calculating, and always in control, that has a mission to carry out screams and gets her attention. She pulls away reluctantly, gasping for air with her head floating somewhere above her. The conduit closes in around her. She presses her lips together, swallows, and stares into Harper’s eyes and it hits her that this isn’t a probability wave. Not a possible future. It is reality, and the realization leaves her dizzy.

It’s been a long time since she has kissed anyone the way she just kissed Harper. There is no way they can go back to the way they were after this. And she has never been more terrified of her own emotions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a continuation of the surprise kiss prompt from the chapter before.


	4. To Catch a Star

One look at her face and all the pleasant fuzziness in his limbs disappears as his heart falls and thumps on the deck. Her eyes have grown impossibly wider and she’s looking around like she’s looking for the nearest exit, backing away from him and not even being subtle about it. If she gets to the ladder, she’s going to bolt, and he knows it because he knows her. Things are going to get really awkward really fast.

Not that they hadn’t already.  
  
What exactly was he thinking, kissing Trance? A screw, or ten, or even a hundred must have come loose. He didn’t remember hitting his head during the battle, but obviously, something inside his thick skull is shorting out. They work together. All of his flirtations, jokes, and fantasies—if he’d actually thought they’d go anywhere he would have stopped. Relationships are all sorts of complicated, more so with coworkers, and that’s with the best case scenario of both parties agreeing on the kissing before the kissing happens. This is bad and he needs to fix it but it’s also hopeless because he can’t engineer his way out of feelings.

With hands shaking, he grabs her wrist. Holds on tight, not giving her a chance to slip away. “You don’t get to kiss me like that and run off.”

“ _You_ kissed _me_.” It’s an accusation honed to a point by her tone. Good thing looks can’t kill, or he’d be ash. Trance doesn’t like to be cornered and he has her back up against a wall—and not in the way he’d like to, either.

Concentrate.

Heat lingers on his lips and her scent clings to him. Part of his brain is stuck on that like a gummed up gear while the rest works overtime to compensate.

“Nuh-uh, no way, darlin’. I may have started it, but you sure as hell finished it, and you certainly knew what you were doing.”

Definitely experienced in the realm of making out. 20 out of 10. Would make out again.

He’s not sure why, but he hadn’t really considered that Trance might have had a love life. He wonders now what he thought she was doing with the boys she’d met on Drift when they’d crewed on the Maru—the nights when she hadn’t returned to her bunk. Studying some rare and unusual plant or animal? Sharing a pleasant conversation? Maybe.

_Get it together, Harper._

Anger melts from her features and is replaced by a deep frown. An uncomfortable silence carries on for at least a century before she speaks again. “I shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake.”

Ouch. That stings a little.

“Didn’t really feel like a mistake. Felt like—” Like feelings. But he doesn’t say anything and allows his words just to hang there.

Like one of her flowers when the environmental controls glitches for a day, she withers. She sinks to the deck with her back to the circuits, crossing her legs in front of her. Ten years drop off of her face. The temptation to walk away is there. He’s never seen her look so small It’s the easy path. At least for now. But when tomorrow comes and they are forced to work on Command together, side by side at the same workstation, he’ll pay for taking the easy way out. Dylan and Beka will be there. Rommie too. Eyes burning into their backs, wondering what is wrong without their friendly good mornings, easy smiles, and playful banter. Someone will say something. Probably Dylan. Maybe even call them into his room to find out what’s wrong and tell them to work out their problems, because they are friends and crewmates.

“We’ve gotta talk about this. If it’d just been me it would be one thing and I’d let you walk out of here, lick my wounds, and collect my just rewards, but that wasn’t just me. You aren’t getting out of this one. We have to talk.” The words aren’t gentle, but his tone is. Her tough emotions are closer to the surface than she’s ever allowed them to be in his presence and she’s still eying the ladder like there’s a chance she could make a break for it.

Being the responsible adult who insists on talking out their problems is a new one. It’s kind of uncomfortable. Like trying to wear Trance’s coat. They are the same height, but her frame’s a lot smaller, so it’s tight in all the wrong places.

“You kissed me, I got caught up in the moment, that’s all.” It’s not much more than a whisper, and it’s not convincing. Not even close.

He takes a risk and sits beside her and counts it a victory when she doesn’t shift away, though a little bit of eye contact would be nice. Makes it easier to read her, and she’s already so hard to read.

“I don’t believe you, and you know as well as I do that I’m not going to be able to leave this conduit and forget it ever happened, and I don’t think you are either.”

This wouldn’t be so damned hard if she’d just let someone in once in a while. Of course, it wouldn’t be so damned hard if he’d just stopped himself from kissing her in the first place. But, details.

When her gaze finally meets his, her bottom lip is puffed out in a pout and it really shouldn’t be as adorable as it is because they are in serious life-altering territory here. Whether they work it out or not, it doesn’t just affect them. The crew relies on each other. It’s a careful network of trust that’s taken years to build.

“Harper, I am telling you right now that we need to drop this.” She’s using that heeby-jeeby tone she does when he’s prying too much and getting to close to figuring out what she wants to hide. She doesn’t seem to realize he knows she’s manipulating him most of the time and that he usually backs away of his own accord because Trance is dangerous. Beautiful, kind, loving, extremely sexy—but most of all, dangerous. “It is not safe for you, or for me, or for anyone else on our crew.”

One of the bands holding his temper in check snaps and his temper lashes out before he can get it under control again. “You know, I’m getting pretty damn tired of that line coming from you. Don’t worry about it, Harper. Don’t ask questions, Harper.” He’s gesticulating wildly now, and she shrinks away from him the way she used to when they were younger. “Go play with your toys and ignore the woman behind the curtain, Harper. I’m not going to accept it this time. I don’t know why I kissed you. I sure as hell wasn’t thinking, but I did, and you could have done any number of things to stop it, and you didn’t. I feel like this time I deserve an actual answer—none of your smoke and mirrors.”

Dammit. Yelling at Trance is definitely the best way to get her to open up and tell him her secrets. The tactic has worked so well for him in the past. He sighs, breathes in to the count of five and out to the count of eight, the way Mama Harper taught him years ago. Trance’s pouty bottom lip trembles and tears collect in the corners of her eyes. God, he hates tears. Especially when he’s the cause of them.

“You’re right,” she says as he is trying to formulate an apology. Something to make things right again because Mama Harper also taught him to think before he spoke, especially in anger. You can only control what’s in your brain, she’d said. Words spoken in anger never truly go away. The hurt of them lingers.

He never quite learned that lesson, though he’s reminded of it every time this happens.

The apology gets struck in his mind, half-formed.  _He's right?_

She doesn’t follow up. Just watches him, and he squirms because she’s looking at him the way a street pup does when it wants comfort but it’s too frightened to approach. It doesn’t suit her.

“Why can’t we explore this, see where it takes us?” he asks. That’s the real question.

She swallows. Her eyes twitch as if she’s going to break eye contact, but she maintains it. The fingers that had set his scalp on fire only moments before rest on her lap. They close into firsts and then open again repeatedly. “Andromeda, engage privacy mode.”

“Privacy mode engaged.” Andromeda’s voice is strong, solid, and stable. Andromeda doesn’t change, and he loves that about her. When he messes up, he can fix it. It’s literally his job as Chief Engineer. Plus, she’s hot when she’s mad. Trance is usually terrifying or closed-lipped an utterly frustrating. Right now, though, she’s kind of pathetic, and he wants to hug her, but he doubts she wants him to touch her again since his touch got them into this situation.

“I’m not lying to you when I say it is dangerous, Seamus. A relationship with you, with anyone on this ship, is forbidden. It jeopardizes my people’s plans. We could both be punished if they find out.”

Punished. That sounds bad, but not too bad. “How bad can the punishment be? It’s not like they’d kill us,” he jokes because there is too much tension in the room and its crowding out all the breathable air. Trance doesn’t smile. Her fingers curl into tight, white-knuckled fists and stay that way.

Oh Crap

He should let it go, back off now, and try and let things go back to normal because he’s pretty fond of living. But he doesn’t. He knows nothing about Trance’s people except that they produced her, and she’s his best friend. So he rationalizes. He’s good at that. “I’ve never seen anyone who looks like you out there and no one else has, so they can’t be that close. There are billions of stars in the sky, and only few can belong to your people, right? What they don’t know won’t hurt us.”

She shifts again, pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them, like a child who's just woken from a nightmare. She twists her body to face him. A tear slips down her right cheek, glistening in the light. “That’s the problem. There are billions of celestial bodies in the Universe. They’re everywhere. I lost contact when my younger self traded places with me, but they know where I am and who I am with. It’s only a matter of time…” she trails off.

His brows try to make friends with his nose. Something is wrong with the language processing part of his brain because for a moment it sounds like Trance is talking about stars, moons, and planets as if they are sentient. As alive as he is and fully capable of coming after her.

Oh crap.

It hits him. Like an asteroid crashing to the earth. Like a torpedo against Andromeda’s hull. There are so many signs that it’s amazing he hadn’t guessed it before. There are suns all over her room. Little smiling trinkets, some gold, some made of crystal. He’s bought a few of them for her. There is a sun tattooed on her back. At least there was, he hasn’t seen her back in years. She’s always going on about beauty and light and how they can change the Universe.

Then there is an image of a naked goddess in a temple with silk hangings. An image he saw when the All System’s Library was uploaded into his brain, and one he’s never been able to forget no matter how much he tried. The temple walls were covered in elaborate silk wall hangings, and each of them was a picture of a radiant sun.

Purple. Gold. Sparkley.

Everything he knows about the Universe and his place in it flips over. Turns upside down. It’s dizzying. And while this is tempest is roaring within his skull, a living sun looks on with wide brown eyes and tears running down her cheeks. He’s confused. There are millions of questions rushing through his mind at light speed, tumbling all over each other. His hands are shaking again. And yet, all he wants to do is reach out and dry those tears because she’s hurting, and it really doesn’t matter what she is because it doesn’t change who she is. So, he takes his thumb and brushes away a freshly fallen year.

“Your people are suns?” he asks softly but realizes that isn’t quite right. An actual sun can’t walk among people without destroying them, and he’s seen her bleed. And the kiss… Her body, at least, is as organic as his. “Or, like avatars of suns? Like Rommie, but organic.”

Through the tears, a small smile forms. It is almost proud. “You always were too smart for your own good. Always on the brink of figuring me out. It’s why I had to scare you away from looking into it when you got access to the Library again. I don’t think the Librarians knew what they had on me, on my people, but I knew you would figure it out with the clues they gave you. We are the avatars of suns, planets, and moons.”

The tension is diffusing. He scoots in front of her and sits cross-legged so that they are eye to eye. It’s going to take time to process what this means, but that time is not now, because that is science and this is feeling, and he isn’t great at mixing the two. So he focuses on his more immediate concern. “I’m willing to take the risk if the alternative is losing my best friend because we can’t go back from this. You know that.”

Her eyes search his. She opens her mouth, closes it again, and then takes a deep breath, shaking her head. “What if I am not willing to risk it?”

Ten minutes ago she was just a friend, and now his heart is breaking. “Trance…” He’s begging now.

She presses her eyes shut and deep wrinkles form on her forehead as if she’s in pain. She takes a few slow, deep, breaths and then looks at him again. “I saw you die today in multiple possible futures. I had to make a choice. Your life or the lives of everyone else on the ship and it tore me apart. There was nothing I could do to save you. Over and over again I saw it until I finally, at the last second, I found a way. You are asking me to risk your life for a feeling. To give you my heart knowing it is going to be broken and that is could be my fault you were killed.” It comes out a whisper. The tears fall more freely, and he knows now why she came to him this evening. Why she’d looked at him like he was the only person she wanted to see.

He was.

Again, he is drawn to her. He rocks onto his knees. “I’m going to kiss you again.”

She doesn’t move to stop him. His heart does some sort of Irish jig, tapping a million beats per second and jumping up and down in his chest. There is no manual he can read to help him understand this situation, but this feels like the right thing to do. Cupping her face with his hands, he brushes her lips with his. When she doesn’t push him away he does it again, lingering there. She returns his kiss. Once, twice, and then more. She unfurls her legs and rises to meet him and he wraps his arms around her waist. There is salt on her lips from the tears that still fall.

After they part, he pulls her into a tight embrace, and it feels right too. “Your heart is breaking right now. You want this as much as I do,” he speaks into her hair.

For a few moments, she stays in his arms, her chest rising and falling against his. He never wants to let her go.

Then she pulls back, looks him in the eyes again. “I’m afraid. It is a terrifying choice. My people don’t understand organics. Your lives are so short compared to ours. They do not believe you to be just as amazing and complex as we are. If they feel that I am jeopardizing my mission, they won’t hesitate to punish me in whatever way they believe will ensure my compliance.”

His mother and father’s faces come to him. They’d fallen in love under a Nietzschean dictatorship despite knowing their hearts would inevitably be broken. There wasn’t a single heart on Earth that hadn’t been shattered, picked up off the floor, and glued back together at least once. His included.

“Okay, yeah, that’s pretty scary.” His words are coming out quickly, and he lets them because he’s afraid he will lose his nerve if he stops or slows down. “But we are always one step away from dying out here. My mom and dad knew they’d die young, but they still chose each other. Why can’t we do the same? Try it. Push our fears aside, just this once. I don’t think they regretted it, even on the day they died.”

She nods and blinks away a few more tears. “Okay. I will choose my own happiness this time, and I hope I won't regret this." Then she smiles, just a bit, "But I am not telling Dylan.”

“I think,” he says with a laugh, “we should just let the others figure it out on their own.”

He kisses her lips, then her forehead and pulls away, eyes falling on his tool belts with tools scattered around the deck and a half-drunk can of Sparky Cola nearby. He sighs and then yawns. “But before we can even figure this out, I have to get this done.” He picks up his nano welder off the deck and then hands Trance a scanner. “Wanna check my welds?”

“I’d be happy too.”

He smiles at her and she smiles back. These next few days are going to be difficult. There is a lot to process and this is going to change everything. But his mom always told him to reach for the stars. How he wishes he could tell her that he finally caught one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was inspired in part by the prompt "Try it. Just this once. You won't regret it, I promise." There might be a bit of a gap in updating this one while I figure out the plan for the rest of the chapters since it definitely wants to grow into a bigger story and I have a few other projects on the line.


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